The Global Naga Forum (GNF) has appealed to President Droupadi Murmu, to help in the "ongoing negotiations for a peaceful resolution of the seventy-five years old Indo-Naga political problem".
The GNF said this in its memorandum submitted to the President of India who is on a two-day visit to Nagaland from Wednesday.
"We are delighted to welcome you to Nagaland and to the Naga homeland, which is home to many indigenous Naga groups/tribes totaling to 67 who live in four states in Northeast India and a province in Myanmar," the GNF memorandum stated, adding, "We are writing to you with hopeful expectation on your first official visit to our land, and with a fervent appeal for help in the ongoing negotiations for a peaceful resolution of the seventy-five years old Indo-Naga political problem".
The GNF said that its "hopeful expectation" and appeal are that the peace settlement be based on resolving the fundamental issue of the Indo-Naga conflict, namely the formalization of the Peoplehood of the Nagas.
The GNF also said that many other competing interests and problems have accreted over the years, which will need to be addressed with integrity and skilled diplomacy from the stakeholders at the negotiations.
"But these conflicts are contingent problems, not fundamental to it. What was from the start, still is, fundamental in the Indo-Naga conflict has been the Government of India's unyielding determination to deny the Naga people the human right of self-determination in their ancestral homelands," the GNF also mentioned.
It further said that the conflict started with India's opposition by military force to the original political aspiration of the Nagas to live in peace as one people, "and to grow and build mutually beneficial relations with one another and with our neighbors, as well as with the larger world".
This was and continues to be the crux of the tragic Indo-Naga conflict, it added.
The GNF then said, "So, while we recognize the critical role the combined power and resources Government of India and the Nagaland state government bring to bear on the larger Indo-Naga relations, the Global Naga Forum fervently submits to your Excellency that there is one clear pathway to a peaceful resolution of the longstanding Indo-Naga political problem".
According to the GNF, "All other solutions are contingent upon this fundamental one: demilitarization and a legally enforceable constitutional structure with a timetable for recognition and implementation of the peoplehood of the Nagas, with a self determined governance system in an undivided ancestral homeland comprising all the Naga territories in India and Myanmar."
